Motherhood Meets Mastectomies

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Mosquitoes

Yesterday morning I did something I swore I would never do! I willingly and purposely watched CBS’ Sunday Morning. I am officially ancient. As a kid, I would wake up every Sunday morning and go park myself in the “snuggle bunny hole” (ya know, the spot right in between your parents in their bed). Of course there were four of us vying for space in the hole but as my siblings got older and started making their way downstairs to watch cartoons, I was the baby and hung around for much too long. My parents would always turn on that program and the image of the graphic sun would come on the screen with its music and scenic images to follow. Ugh, I dreaded that iconic sun. It meant incredibly boring programming to come. I can’t believe I actually sought it out this morning. These days I am embarrassingly uninformed as my day to day conversations revolve around princess ballerinas and potty time. I needed a little intellectual stimulation. What I got was a frightening message about mosquitoes. They’re winning a battle in which we can’t seem to compete. Gruesome images of researchers willingly getting “stung” (it’s really the bugs’ saliva making welts on your arm, not stingers) in the hopes of finding cures for various diseases carried by these insects. I know that they are getting paid to do it, but it takes a certain courage and tenacity to conduct medical research. I can’t say that testing oneself is really a smart way to do things (in fact, I think it’s pretty dumb), but it’s definitely noble. Without these medical researchers we wouldn’t have the knowledge we now have about all sorts of diseases. I wouldn’t have known about my genetic predisposition to breast cancer and I wouldn’t have this opportunity to prolong my life past what perhaps was destined to be my end. I owe a great deal to these brave (and perhaps a bit mad) scientists.